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Talk:AMERICA/@comment-3390488-20170119174306
So it's my turn, two years later, to put in my two cents. I'm totally not late to the party. ML's portrayal of the US is fairly accurate. It's also not negative, when taken into context and analyzed a little more closely than the surface initially shows. Pragmatism is a necessary priority to follow when you are at the top of the food chain, because somebody else will always be casting a covetous eye towards what you have, and the more desperate their situation, the more likely they are to use whatever methods at their disposal to acquire it if it means their survival. The situation in ML is well past the point of global desperation, and the US is by and large the only country that is fully intact least through Alternative. Jealousy and resentment will run rampant, no matter how charitable you are, unless you give those who are jealous and resentful everything but the shirt off your back. Their jealousy and resentment might not be rational or logical; you don't have any obligation to them, you really get nothing in return for the expenditure at a time where resources must be carefully managed due to raw material shortages that are bound to happen with most of the world lost to humanity, and in this kind of situation, for all you know, you could send them tons of supplies...only for them to be wiped out the day after they receive them. On top of that, there is this little parable to consider: You are in the woods with your faithfully loyal dog, when you are attacked by a bear. Your gun lacks the stopping power to defend yourself against the massive predator, and if you run, it will catch you. Running is not an option. Fighting is not an option. There is only one option...and it requires the sacrifice of your loyal hound whom you have bonded with for years. You sic your dog on the bear, and while the bear mauls it and rips it apart, you manage to flee to safety. You are alive, but you had to do something horrible to ensure this. But, really, what other choice did you have? Either your dog died, or you and your dog died. You loved your dog...but in the end...he wasn't you. He was a dog. A pet. And inevitably, the instincts of self preservation and the human capacity for deductive reasoning dictated the course of action. The same can be said of nations. You will try to protect your allies, send your soldiers to die fighting on their land, spilling their blood on soil that is not theirs, try to keep them able to continue fighting your mutual foes, but all the agreements and treaties in the world will mean nothing if the cold calculus of conflict comes into play if/when it becomes clear your ally's survival is going to cripple your own capacity to protect your homeland, or they are lost no matter what you can manage to throw into the meat grinder in their defense. The horde approaches, and your friend mis-steps and badly sprains their ankle as you flee its advance. They die, or you both die when you make the mistake of failing to obey the self-preservation instinct and try to go back for them. You run, even as their pleas for your help ring in your ears... The US sends troops abroad globally to combat the BETA since the start of the invasion. They die fighting for other peoples' homes, oftentimes in vain, and as the world has ceased counting their dead, their deaths likely go unremembered. They are hauled from their TSFs and killed agonizingly by being eaten alive, their bodies profaned through their victorious foes' digestive tracts. Meanwhile, the US takes in their long-time arch-rival, the USSR, when it is over-run by the BETA, providing them with American soil to inhabit. On the one hand, they ARE essentially being used as a shield of sorts from a BETA incursion into Alaska. On the other, the immediate proximity gives them ample opportunities to glean intelligence about the US's capabilities and technology through infiltration made easier by an insecurable border. Any US personnel that find themselves on the Soviets' side of the aisle are subject to capture, torture, and interrogation without hesitation. On top of this, they are ruthlessly attempting to acquire prototype technology through deceipt and misdirection...technology that, post-BETA, they will most assuredly turn on the US without a second thought. Finally, they are developing G-bombs, and the US cannot be certain of just what they intend to do with them, whether that's deploy them against the BETA...or deploy them against the US to wipe out its leadership and command structure so as to effortlessly secure American resources for themselves. In light of the two nations' history with one another, the possibility of the latter is terrifyingly plausible, even highly probable. They were enemies and they only stand together now for their own mutual benefit, which effectively boils down to a single goal that will not sustain any kind of alliance or peace; stopping the BETA. There is no cause nor reason to trust them any further than they can be thrown, and their actions do nothing to ease those suspicions. They are ruthless, expending their troops with blatant apathy for their losses. If that's how they treat their own soldiers, what can possibly be expected of them towards their bitter rivals once the only shared benefit of partnership is removed from the equation? Then you have Japan. At first glance, it seems pretty shitty of the US to bail on Japan and renege on a very important agreement, but consider this: Up to that point, what exactly had Japan contributed to the global war effort? Next to nothing. It is clear that the one who benefits the most by far is Japan; if the US were invaded, what use would the inexperienced and limited forces of the Japanese military be? But the breaking point is likely the moment that it became clear that Japan, which has no experience with full-blown warfare against the BETA at all, has no intention of heeding the advice and suggestions of the vastly more experienced US military, instead clinging to childishly stubborn and idiotically naive ideals of honor and the protection of every inch of Japan at practically any cost, and tunnel vision themselves to the smaller pictures to the extent that they fail to see that the big picture would find retreating and regrouping preserving their military assets, fighting capabilities, and effectiveness to a much greater extent, in turn ultimately leading to a much less bloody conclusion. The first suggestion SEEMS drastic; nuke four cities to obliterate the BETA, condemning how many millions to death by nuclear inferno? But what happens in the end? Those cities, and their populaces, are annihilated by the BETA, by which point it is too late to nuke them, as laser-classes are now swarming the area, preventing bombers of extremely vital strategic importance in regards to the bigger picture around the globe from unleashing their payloads without being pew-pewed out of the sky. The US military command, understanding the situation perfectly thanks to decades and thousands of operations worth of experience fighting the alien invaders and determining the best, most pragmatic course of action, urges the Japanese military to abandon the lost causes that are the cities on the verge of being taken, retreat to a more defensible position to consolidate, regroup, and fortify to slow, or even stop the BETA advance. The Japanese military foolishly dismisses their suggestions, failing to understand that they need to sic their dog on the bear so that a far more favorable outcome can be achieved, and deciding to try shooting the bear ineffectually. They refuse to listen to the advice of those who have been committing themselves to the war against the BETA since day one all around the globe, and stubbornly cling to the outdated, idealistic notions of bushido and other such ridiculous nonsense in such a world. Japan and the US have both been spared the taint of the BETA on their lands up to this point, but while the US leaves the safety of home to face humanity's greatest threat, the Japanese have kicked up their feet and taken it easy, rather than use the strategic advantage of their erstwhile safety and distance from the battlefronts to gear up and prepare for total warfare, much less contribute anything of value to the war effort. In other words, US military commanders are seeing their decades of bitterly hard-earned experience and martial wisdom casually dismissed without consideration by a bunch of foreign FNGs who are needlessly wasting their combat effectiveness and assets for no discernibly strategic gains and who so far over the last few decades have been of no real noteworthy help that they could not find elsewhere were it not for the treaty. Even if they are preserved, the cost of American lives and materiel will be in exchange for a military force that clearly is playing at war like it's a game and is showing no signs of changing at all even as they're torn to shreds fighting for abandoned, empty cities, all for nothing more than symbolism and dogma. In other words, if by some horrible stroke of misfortune the US finds itself needing to call on the Japanese military for help in defending American soil, the Japanese will at best prove to be more of a hindrance than a help, and at worst might not even adhere to the agreement themselves; they might renege on it in favor of using the diversion to shore up their own defenses. They won't listen to you despite your vastly superior understanding of warfare against the BETA; why should you trust them to heed the call to defend a foreign nation when they haven't done so so far as it is? The straw that breaks the camel's back is when the Japanese military orders the US military to hold an unteneble position, putting American lives at risk to protect another poorly-chosen objective. OF COURSE the US military commanders would look at each other, shake their heads, say "No, fuck this," and pull their troops out. Let these idiots keep treating this bloodbath like a game, preserve your own resources for a fight that is actually not an obvious strategic disaster in the making, and get the fuck outta dodge. As for the agreement? Tear it in half and set it on fire; it's not like they were going to be that big of a help, anyway. So, in context, the invasion of Japan in '98 is an example of experienced and calculated pragmatism compared to dogmatic, romanticized idealism. It is only because of the bizarre shift of the BETA's priorities that the Japanese military, and by extension, Japan itself, is spared, and not by any measurement of their combat prowess. Had the US forces remained and not withdrawn, they would have been lost for nothing. Then there's the matter of military doctrine to consider. The US prefers guns, guns, guns, all day urryday, for days, and gives zero fucks about flashy melee techniques or weaponry. You don't need to get into TSF-arm's reach of the BETA, a foe that relies on crushing force and horde/swarm tactics to overwhelm their enemies, if you can gun them down as they charge you. If they start getting closer, that's when you switch to Fire and Maneuver; half the TSF forces fall back while the remaining half work to slow the BETA enough so that they can pull back whilst the first half takes up the role of providing covering fire for the other half, and so on and so on. It's a tactic that can be summarily described as kiting the swarm while you whittle it down, using your steady retreat to draw out the distance the swarm has to cross to get to you and thus also buying time for reinforcements and fire support, at which point you can use the additional firepower to counter-attack and eliminate the BETA decisively, without needlessly risking entering into melee combat. Sure, those swords look cool but consider this: If a pilot who is a masterful melee combatant is faced with five grapplers surging into them, and they can take down three where an American combat dagger could only account for one, that doesn't change the fact that the two surviving BETA will be all over the wannabe samurai immediately. Again, this is a foe that uses massed numbers of unfeeling, fearless, relentless killing machines capable of adaptation and simply steamrolling anything in their way without regard to casualties; you can't kill them all with your flashy sword, but they can kill you with their brute strength in numbers. Easily. The BETA are melee-centric; why would you want to get into melee combat against a foe whose strength is in melee combat? Why would you not instead utilize the absolute best methods to kill as many of the fuckers as you can without needlessly risking your life, instead, by preferring ranged combat against a foe that doesn't really have much in the ways of ranged weapons apart from their laser-classes? The US doesn't even have to worry about supply lines; they have the means of defending them adequately, and in the event of BETA invasion of the homeland, the supply lines converge everywhere, from everywhere, in the US, with enough military installations and manufacturing facilities all over the nation to ensure that someone will be able to resupply combat forces. On top of this, the US focuses on ranged weapons, and it stands to reason that they're capable of high degrees of accuracy thanks to both technology, experience, and superior training. The BETA cannot kill what they cannot reach. The Japanese military plays at war; the US military wages it. Then later, in order to stop the flow of BETA from the Japanese Hives, the US superweapon's the fuck out of them. What do the Japanese immediately do? Start bitching, pissing, and whining about the obliteration of two cities that were lost causes, anyway, regardless of the respite this buys their entire nation, at the cost of US resources to deploy the damn things. They also act all pissy towards the Army for bailing on them, when their own actions and decisions are what drove the US to abandon a clearly lost cause. So, Japan is a bunch of useless whiners for the most part, who keep diving headlong into combat that is not optimized for victory on either a tactical or strategic level and thus are just dumping valuable resources into the incinerator. The USSR is clearly going to cut the throat of the US the first viable chance it gets, and is clearly attempting to steal cutting-edge weapon and TSF technology. The nations of South America are unstable and unpredictable, and have long harbored resentment against their richer, more prosperous northern neighbors, for reasons sometimes legitimate, oftentimes manufactured. France later directly attacks the US for G-bombing the fuck out of the hives all over the world in an act of desperation when nobody else really had any better ideas, anyway, despite constant military and emergency aid being provided to them for decades. Canada, their northern neighbor and closest and most important trading partner, joins in the attack. With friends like these, who the hell needs enemies?? Of course the US would choose the F-22 for its superior ATSF capabilities over the YF-23 that makes the absurd mistake of engaging a foe whose strength is close-quarters combat in close quarters! Why wouldn't the US want to end the BETA war with them being firmly on top? Everyone else is either dead, incompetent, or clearly a threat that will need to be dealt with in the future! When they talk of safeguarding their interests, they don't speak of world domination centralized global government, even with the massive depopulation resulting from the war, would be entirely impossible to operate, especially in the aftermath of the war and all the chaos involved with it, they speak of defending what is rightfully theirs. Their soil, their holdings, their influence, which they have a right to anyway considering that they are far and away the greatest contributors to the war effort against the BETA everywhere, not just their home turf. They fought and bled for those; they earned it with blood, bullets, and big brass balls. Ensuring the means of slapping down the surviving jealous losers who will inevitably covet and attempt to gain control of what they do not deserve and what is not theirs through force or theft at some point or another is not paranoid pragmatism; it's sensible pragmatism. Plus the F-22 is quite clearly an extraordinarily capable TSF against the BETA, even if it wasn't the absolute best, it still satisfies the standard requirements of lethality against the BETA just fine, and for a fair amount less in terms of cost than the best-of-the-best YF-23. Yuuya also mention in TE that the F-22 actually does have a high degree of melee capability on top of its considerable firepower and advanced stealth tech, so even then, it can't be said that the F-22 is helpless or ineffectual if the BETA get too close. THAT ALL SAID...yes, the US does fuck up quite a bit in ML and real life too, clearly...but to be fair, no level of technology can grant omniscience, and desperate times often call for desperate measures... So in closing...I think the writers didn't actually portray Japan as perfect, pure good guys and the US as a bunch of dishonorable cowardly dicks who callously and unnecessarily abandon their allies to the BETA. They portrayed Japan as idealistic, with a rigid, inflexible society that makes it difficult for them to effectively adapt to warfare was demonstrated in WWII, by the way, and who lack an adequate measure of worldly experience in matters of warfare, and are also too insular for their own good, leading to their lack of participation in the war with the BETA until it's their own asses on the line, and thus depriving them of combat experience that they clearly needed sorely. Meanwhile, the US is depicted as clinical in their approach to strategy, reasonably and understandably pragmatic in terms of understanding how global politics and human nature works and how to respond to both in order to ensure the safety and prosperity of its people, its first-and-foremost responsibility, highly capable in matters of technology, warfare, adaptability to the flow of events, and actually somewhat noble at times Marines being a prime example of this, the USS JFK committing its entire flight of TSFs despite the impossibility of the task laid before them, leading to Yui's uncle even remarking "Such a strong sense of duty...but it will not be enough...", and a couple other examples, even if its actions can fuck others over; it's not intentional in the vast majority of cases, and, again, desperate times, desperate measures. Hell, Yuuya is a half-Japanese half-Caucasian American, and while he hates his Japanese heritage at first, when he finally does come to accept it and take pride in it, he doesn't renounce his American heritage or scorn it; he simply comes to terms with what he is and embraces his Japanese heritage as much as his American heritage. If ML was trying to be nationalistic in favor of Japan, it would have had him expressing disgust for his American heritage after accepting and indulging in his Japanese heritage, and the US would have been wholly incompetent while the Japanese forces steamroll fucking everything without a problem. In other words, if ML was trying to paint Japan in any particularly positive light...it really, really failed. It seems almost to be a bit of a critique against Japanese culture in some ways, that it's too rigid, too inflexible, too dogmatic, and too conservative, and that it better not require an alien invasion to start changing that, because then it would quite possibly be far too late. The American characters are, for the most part, typically affable, boisterous, courageous, friendly, outgoing, and/or even open-minded and understanding of Japanese culture. Meanwhile, a lot of the Japanese characters come off as cold, rigid, unwelcoming, arrogant, condescending, egotistical, prideful to a fault, close-minded, and/or insecure. Additionally, when France and Canada attack the US, the Japanese and US stand together against them, and it's worth noting that prior to this, the US gives over sizable portions of American soil to the Japanese so they have somewhere to live, instead of simply telling them "Sucks to be you guys, sorry to fuck you over, but we've got our own shit to deal with now, you're on your own" like most anime depicting this kind of situation would typically do. It doesn't say that the US is bad or that Japan is perfect; it contrasts the differences between the two cultures and societies, and goes on to put forth the message that despite being opposites in so many ways, the US and Japan as partners complement each other nicely, like yin and yang, and that both cultures learning from one another benefits both. It indicates that, yes, we've done some fucked up shit to each other in the past...but the operative word is past. Okay. I've rambled on enough. I might be analyzing this all too closely, but given the comparisons I can hold ML up against, and how ML handles the subject matters by contrast, I'd say ML is actually quite realistic and open-minded in many ways.